Activation Degradation audiobook

4.5⭐️Oh wow, I loved this. I will be recommending this to so many readers!

I'm a fan of Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries, so I was immediately curious when I read the blurb to this novel:"The Murderbot Diaries makes first contact in this new, futuristic, standalone novel exploring sentience and artificial intelligence through the lenses of conflicted robot hero Unit Four, from Marina Lostetter [...]"This comparison was written to draw readers in, lure all the Murderbot fans out there into this novel. It's a marketing hoax - and a disservice this book doesn't deserve.Let's start with the fake news: Unit Four is not Murderbot, and it never will be. There's a lot of cynism missing, but there's also the fact this time around, there is a human component to the bot. I'm not talking organic material (Murderbot has that, too), I'm talking about a human handler. Unit Four is not acting alone. It's a different setting.And here's the part why this comparison is a disservice: It might rise expectations that aren't fulfilled, and it might leave Murderbot fans frustrated just because it isn't Murderbot as advertised. And maybe their experience with this novel ends in frustration and at that point. Which would be a shame.Shame on the publisher for false advertising! This book is good enough on its own!Because Activation Degradation tells its own unique story, and it's different from Murderbot. It's also multilayered. We experience the world through Unit Four, a freshly activated maintenance robot. We learn en passant that Earth has a population of roughly one and a half billion - which immediately makes it clear to me that _something_ must have happened, because that number is way down from today. If you're anything like me, that alone gives you food for thought.And there are the invaders. Four was activated prematurely because it needs to fend off an attack by the invaders, without knowing anything about those guys. Its handler refuses to hand out more information than a few spare things, and I'm back to thinking about that reduced population of earth. Right off the bat I'm speculating about the identity of the invaders. And I love it when a book does that!Invaders. In space. Does that make them space invaders? Yeah, I know, I know, I'm old.See, there's no need to tell people this novel is something which it isn't (like Murderbot), you could simply tell people what it is instead - because it's good enough on its own.It's not a story about a robot. Well, yes, seemingly it is, on the outside. But there's more to it, a story about loss, questions about ethics and morality, mortality even. Is Artificial Life easily replaceable, can it be sacrificed without thinking twice? I sense some Philip K. Dick here - what makes us human, and could a machine be the better person? It's a recurring theme for Dick, but if you're curious now, you should read We Can Build You as a wonderful example.You can think you care for someone, and still utilize them - abuse them - like a tool.-- One of the more philosophical aspects of the bookI'm not going to spoiler you, but maybe you've already come to the same conclusion about the identity of the invaders I had. In which case, congrats, we were both right - while we missed the bigger picture behind it. Because the twist wasn't the twist, it was just the primer to the twist. I love it!Since I've already recommended a book to you during this review, let me add a movie as well. 2010's Hunter Prey is not the action movie it might look to be at first glance, rather a chamber drama (in German: Kammerspiel), a drama with very few characters and a big emphasis on dialogue. I'm mentioning this movie for 2 reasons - the fact that it has a plot twist to rival this novel (the ending will make you awe, I can practically guarantee it), and the second fact that way too few people know about this movie. You should watch it, it's a prime example for great storytelling.*****In the end, this novel is a great experience. I especially like the fact that this world is not black or white, but many, many shades of grey. How you want to see it is up to you, there are different possibilities - who's the good one, who's the bad one, who knows? Not me.I have two regrets regarding this novel. The first one is I loath the fact that someone thought it would be necessary to put a Murderbot stamp on this book, probably dooming it because it sends the wrong kind of message, inviting the wrong kind of expectations. And the second regret is the fact that it was a page turner, and I went through it too - damn - fast. I don't want it to be over. Sadly, I got no say.Anyway, read this book. It's great, and I give it 4.5 stars - that last half star I hold back because the end felt a little rushed.You can also read this review on my Blog.

Well this was awesome!

I really hesitated to get this book because of the Murderbot comparison in the blurb. I love Murderbot and don‘t want to read a rip-off. I think they probably did this book a disservice by linking it to Murderbot.Our robot is brought online on a platform orbiting Jupiter, to protect a mining platform that is under attack by aliens. It turns out that the situation is quite different to what Unit Four was lead to believe.I liked the beginning very much and listened to the first half of the book almost in one sitting. There was a pretty good reveal towards the end. Good action sequences. The more reflective parts could have been a bit more elaborate. The plot lost a bit of steam in the second part and my interest flagged a little. I am still trying to decide if I like the rather convenient ending. I find it almost impossible to talk more about this book without spoilers, so I leave it at that. I largely enjoyed this book and might give it another go in printed form to pick up all of the nuances.This is my first book by the author and I got the audiobook. The audiobook narration was good, but I didn‘t love it.Would I pick up a sequel? Maybe. Probably.

I was utterly captivated by this twisting adventure of Unit Four, a robot who's only a few hours old when its entire existence is thrown off-balance. Content warnings: include: violence, drugging, non-explicit sex scene between side characters, radiation, death; mentions of: murder, cannibalism, climate change, mass extinction, slavery.Nothing is at it seems in this book. Every couple chapters both Unit Four's and the reader's view of what is real and true is realigned completely, shifting in such tremendous ways that left me stunned and feel for Unit Four as it experiences all this with no support system to fall back on.I loved the way the worldbuilding worked that way, even though it wasn't always easy to follow along, especially in the beginning, before Unit Four's vocabulary becomes more similar to the average reader's.My favourite part was definitely the way the plot twists and deliberately plays with the reader's expectations based on the given information. It's masterfully written from Unit Four's perspective - we only ever see the world through its eyes, and what it finds normal, and I loved both the moments when we could see how outside information changes its view, and the moments when it finally clicked for me what the things it describes mean in our terms, even if it doesn't have a concept to understand them yet.The cast is rather limited, and truthfully nothing out of the ordinary, but nevertheless a delight to read about. I greatly enjoyed Unit Four, and felt for it constantly, and through its eyes I learned to be intrigued by the other characters as well, and care for them. I also greatly enjoyed the polyamorous and intersex rep.While Activation Degradation is very different from The Murderbot Diaries that it is likened to, I can see why the two are compared. Unit Four and Murderbot are very different characters (and might not get along very well if they met) but both books are about artifically constructed people stumbling into situations completely outside of their programmed parameters and being forced to adapt and take measures to protect that what is dear to them. I love these sort of POVs, so if you like reading from the views of robots or aliens, this is definitely a book for you. I received an ARC and reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

4.5 rounded up

Activation Degradation is a thrilling science-fiction read that has a fresh new take on the topic of artificial intelligence. This book feels like Murderbot’s gritty cousin with an A.I. main character who’s struggling to figure out who they are and what they want to be. It also features one of my favourite tropes – uncovering secrets that change everything you know about the world. Would recommend it to people who enjoy sci-fi thrillers that focus on humanity and sentient responsibility. Thanks to the author for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review Follow me on my Blog, Twitter, and Instagram.

Another 5-star sci-fi hit already??? Hello??? I was struggling so much with my favorite genre the past two months, I'm about due for this kind of success!!!What really makes Activation Degradation stand out is its particular brand of unreliable narration. Our main character, Aimsley, is provided limited knowledge about its world and its situation. It's provided certain truths, then immediately encounters individuals who offer contradicting truths. The core of Aimsley's conflict is that it has no clue who to believe, or even if any of the "truths" are true. It has to figure out how to reconcile these differences in order to make decisions on how it wants to respond to the current situation.Really, this book is one big identity crisis for our main character. Aimsley thinks of itself as a sentient robot with a 3-month shelf life, only to learn that physically, it's in the form of a human that should theoretically be able to live for almost one hundred years. Lostetter makes her readers wonder what "human" really means in a world where sentience is supposed to equate personhood. She also explores the meaning of family, which is an absolute must in space science-fiction. The plot is really just the stage of this peace - what the story is really concerned with is asking questions about who constitutes a person, how or whether one person can use another, and how we are like/unlike other people and other forms of life. What do we owe to our creators? What do we owe to our families? What do we owe to the universe, to ourselves?Activation Degradation is such a thoughtful story with a memorable voice, and it keeps you thinking long after you put it down.

AMS Unit 4 is a biomechanical bot whose sole purpose is to keep its helium-3 mine functional for Earth. After a battle with the "aliens," Four is taken hostage on the ship, and its life will never be the same.Activation Degradation was a beautiful book. I don't even know how to properly describe how much I enjoyed it. There's so much going on, and it was so fast paced, I finished this almost 500 page book in only two days. There are morally gray characters, possibly evil characters that go soft, and a ton of diversity. There's not one but TWO intersex characters in this novel!I was lucky enough to read this advanced review copy from Net Galley, but I will be picking up a hard copy as soon as it's available on September 28th.CW: gaslighting, panic attacks, blood & gore

The publishers do this book and its narrator no favors by comparing it to The Murderbot Diaries. I love The Murderbot Diaries, but Murderbot and Unit Four do not have much in common. Murderbot is a snarky, jaded, depressed, and anxious Millennial; Unit Four is a naive pre-teen that has been homeschooled in a remote village. I found Activation Degradation slow starting, filled with a lot more technobabble than The Murderbot Diaries, and containing a lot less humor.However, I don’t want to just talk about Activation Degradation in comparison to The Murderbot Diaries. The book I was reminded of most was The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Lots of crew interaction with a newcomer. Representation (m/m couple; intersex human, and nonbinary robot, although the robot has “junk,” and a romance with a female crew member seemed to be brewing). I rounded up one full star for the presence of a cat. I enjoyed the crew interaction and Unit Four’s growth; I was skeptical (view spoiler)[of the magical space flower and of the evil machines taking over Earth (hide spoiler)]. I enjoyed reading it but am not sure I’ll read a sequel, and I feel quite sure I won’t find myself re-reading it the way I reread The Murderbot Diaries. I read an advance reader copy of Activation Degradation from Netgalley.

Activation Degradation is well-known author Marina J. Lostetter’s latest published novel, and I found it to be a really interesting story. Dubbed as “The Murderbot Diaries makes first contact…”, I only found a tertiary connection to the famous cyborg. Honestly, though, it does not need the comparison, as the story is able to stand on its own two feet.The main character in this book is Unit Four: a robot designed to protect interstellar mining operations that currently serve planet Earth and its people. What makes Unit Four so different from most of the robots/cyborgs/AIs that reside in many recent science fiction novels is that, while oftentimes the robotic units in question have complete access to all the information they can handle (which is pretty much everything), Unit Four’s access seems to be limited. Thus, when its mission goes awry and it is captured by aliens who do not seem to fit within its knowledge base, it does not really know what to do.I like the premise a lot, because it sets up a situation where beings from different sides of town (“town” being “the Universe”) are put in a situation where they are forced to learn to understand one another. That is a big theme of the story, and I love the way it was addressed. The “first contact” nature of it actually reminded me of another book I finished recently called A Psalm for the Wild Built. Activation Degradation overall isn’t quite as calm and meditative as all that, but it is the idea of meeting someone so different from you and trying to see the world through their eyes that makes the plots of the two books somewhat synonymous (while also being incredibly different), and this theme really appeals to me.I could have used a bit more of an action-y plot in certain areas, as there were times the narrative felt a little flat to me. But, Lostetter balances that out by creating intrigue in other ways, so I will not complain too much about that aspect. The other drawback in my opinion is that I felt certain plot points could have used more development. A few times I felt like certain events just kind of became important pieces of the story, and I think there was room to add some depth.Overall, I really liked Activation Degradation. Lostetter’s take on the future of technology and how it intertwines with the existence of organic life is really thought-provoking and unique. I definitely recommend this book for fans of sci-fi

4 stars. There's a lot to like in this book. The world building, the main character and its growth throughout the story, the overarching message. The book also surprised me several times, which is rare these days, a true joy for the mind. But then the middle of the book felt stagnant to me. The main character's dilemma and its interactions with the outside world kept playing out the same scenarios several times, and it got tedious. The story also lost some of the urgency that was established earlier because of this. So while each individual part of the story hits on all the right notes, the sum of them feels... perhaps not badly paced, but the pacing and the balance could've been better.It's really hard to talk about this story without spoiling it, so if you're a LGBTQ+ friendly sci-fi fan, definitely give this a go.

Oh, hello, blurb that barely scratches the surface of this book. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting in to with this book, but it was exactly what I needed right now. At its heart, it’s a book about found family, about finding the people who love you even when you mess up, who love you for who you are and not what you can do for them.“It had a job to do. It wanted to do its job. It wanted to pilot the boat, defeat the aliens, earn its handler’s praise, and then live out the rest of its activation period in whatever state of being was exactly the opposite of this go go go go.It had been awake for less than fifteen minutes and already it longed to rest.”Autonomous Maintenance System Unit 4 is not having a good day. Freshly reconstituted during an attack on the mining platform around Jupiter that it calls home, Unit 4 is immediately sent off to fight the aliens that are dismantling pieces of the station. Something isn’t right, with Unit 4 or the aliens, but it sets off on its suicide mission anyway. After all, it’s a robot designed to do its job, so it’ll do the best job it can. But this attack – and its aftermath – have more ramifications than Unit 4 can possibly have imagined. Angry and confused, will Unit 4 take the chance to become more than it was intended to be?“But what’s happening here, between all of us, could change everything. I know it could.”This is one of those books it’s hard to talk about without getting into spoilers. The plot twists are interesting, and in at least one case for me, highly unexpected. While you’re thrown right into the middle of the action, the beginning is a bit slow but quickly accelerates once the reader understands exactly what’s at stake – even if Unit 4 doesn’t. While there’s a decent amount of action, the heart of the story is the characters and the relationships they build, especially Unit 4’s.“Why look after the soul of a thing if you’ve trained it to believe it has no soul?”The blurb specifically compares this to Murderbot, which I can see on a surface level. There’s the focus on found family, but the tone is very different from Murderbot’s sarcasm and cynicism. Unit 4, instead, spends much of the book confused and frightened. There are so many lines in the book that start with “It didn’t know what to do” and, wow, after this past year, I empathized so much with that. One of Unit 4’s first actions after being reconstituted is “decommissioning” one of its counterparts when it’s injured, complete with a wash of feelings that it doesn’t understand. From that moment on I spent a good chunk of the book just wanting to wrap it in a warm blanket and give it a hug. All Unit 4 wants to do is complete the job it’s been programmed to do and its slow awakening to the realities of what that job entails, of its purpose, were both intensely heartbreaking and heartwarming.Much like Unit 4, the reader slowly gets the feeling that something isn’t quite right, and then gets hit with the horrifying clue-stick long before the character does. A good part of the emotional weight of the book is anticipating how Unit 4 will react to those revelations – and how the characters around Unit 4 will react to it. Speaking of those characters, it’s casually queer (space is gay, folks), with characters with nonbinary pronouns, a m/m couple and an intersex person. There’s a sweet romantic element, too, just delightfully gentle in the way it was woven in.Overall, an easy 4.5 stars, and definitely a book I’ll be recommending. While the main plot is wrapped up neatly, I’m hoping for a sequel as this is definitely a universe I’d like to explore more of!Content notes: (view spoiler)[violence (gore and murder), body horror, cannibalism (discussed), slavery, suicidal ideation, panic attack (on page) (hide spoiler)]I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

What a lovely story! I'm so glad I went in with an open mind rather than listening to all the comparisons - this is entirely its own story and if you go in expecting Murderbot you WILL be disappointed. If you go in expecting weird biotechnology space fighting, you will be THRILLED.Let me lead with the bad: there are definitely parts of this that get a little over the top monologue-y about the nature of sentience and independent choices. As another reviewer mentioned, the Pride flags are jarring - even as a member of several letters of the LGBTQ+ acronyms, I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief that the flags would be unaltered centuries in the future when these minorities are explicitly socially normalized. There's a bit near the beginning where I got just a bit tired of the endless descriptions of biomechanical systems that somehow managed to still be vague enough that I couldn't quite picture them. Turns out that was very much on purpose and made later imagery way cooler, so I'm very glad I kept going until I hit the first twist (end of Part One, if you're wondering) at which point I was CAUGHT and didn't put down the book again.The good: Everything else. Unit Four is a delight. The crew is a delight. BEES!!!!!! Someone watched Jupiter Ascending and said !!!!!! internally and that person was me and also this author. (It's a minor section, don't worry - JA is great fun but not the vibe this story is going for.) Everything about the sister units. The poor boat. The handler!!!!!!! I cannot put enough exclamation points to describe my feelings about the handler. (I want to make out with it. Don't @ me.) Unit Four faces some very nuanced decisions and handles them with a level of reason that I adore, especially compared to its emotional immaturity. I love how it's kind of sour on the whole "deciding your own fate" thing even as it throws itself full-force into doing just that. Love you, Unit Four.There's a ton of room for this to be a series and I dearly hope it does. If you're worried that means it ends on a sequel-bait hook, worry not: it stands alone perfectly well.I'm deeply grateful to Goodreads Giveaways for the ARC that led to this review.

This story starts out as a story of survival. An enemy has attacked their station...and the four robots need to fend of these alien invaders.As the story proceeds, there are a number of carpets pulled out from underneath the reader. It forces the reader to re-evaluate everything it has learned and formulate new boxes to put all this information in.I am glad that the marketing material equated it with Murderbot Diaries (which I had just binge reread. I was in the mood for THIS type of book. It is different in tone and deliverty, but it does deal with the relations of humans to robots. It takes that SAME care with that discussion, but not as funny (which it totally okay).I NOW want to read her trilogy. I picked up book one and two...so hopefully that will be something I delve into in the next few months. i have found another new author to tell people about. The books that are being written right now is truly inspiring.